


Burn my lungs and curse my eyes.

by camseydavis (orphan_account)



Category: Bandom, Paramore
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-25
Updated: 2013-10-25
Packaged: 2017-12-30 10:12:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1017361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/camseydavis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taylor knows Hayley's favorite pastime is spending the nights in the arms of a girl, and Hayley knows Taylor likes to fill his lungs with smoke so he won't fade away into the air.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn my lungs and curse my eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for some sexual situations, although they're not very explicit.   
> This is heavier than what I usually write, and kinda messy. Sorry 'bout that.

Taylor finds out accidentally. He's actually on his way out of the venue and about to go home, and if he hadn't forgotten his damn phone on top of that table, he wouldn't have seen what he saw.

He did forget his damn phone on top of that table, though, so he walks back into the dressing room.

What he sees on that table is not his phone. He's pretty sure his phone is on the floor, now.

The sight is a bit more… interesting, to say the least.

He clears his throat.

"Um. Ladies?" He says, narrowing his eyes. Hayley, on the contrary, opens hers wide and reaches out for the coat laying on the closest chair, covers her naked chest with it. She also pushes Juliette off of her.

"I-" Hayley starts, but Taylor just shakes his head.

"I'm-" he tries to say but words just aren't coming to him now, "I just want my phone back." Hayley immediately reaches for the phone (which, yes, was on the floor) and hands it back to Taylor.

Taylor takes it, gives Hayley and Juliette a tight smile, and walks away.

When he's out, he lights up a cigarette.

So Hayley is having an affair. With a girl. Huh.

-//-

Hayley always had this habit of telling everybody who she was dating, whether it was Chad Gilbert or Josh Farro (although that was a bit more secretive) or that Matt boy from middle school. Now, Taylor is starting to think it was mostly her telling everybody she had a boyfriend. Male. Because she _is_ straight, thank you very much.

And, now that he thinks about it, when he met Juliette she had been gushing about Spencer and how nice Spencer was and how in love with Spencer she was and how good of a boyfriend Spencer was. Now husband, though, since they've been married for almost two years.

He didn't even see it coming when he introduced Hayley and Juliette. They just smiled politely at each other and shook hands. There wasn't even a meaningful look. He wasn't even aware they talked to each other.

Apparently, they do more than just talking.

Instead of just calling a cab, he walks home. On his way, he smokes a few cigarettes more. And thinks.

He knows Hayley will try to address this as soon as possible. He doesn't know what he's going to say.

-//-

When Taylor arrives home, Hayley is waiting for him on the porch. _Obviously_ , he thinks. She probably did call a cab.

"We should talk." She says, solemnly.

Taylor doesn't think they should. But he opens the door and lets her in, anyway.

-//-

Hayley starts by saying "I'm not gay", even though there was plenty of evidence of the contrary. Taylor gives her another tight smile, as if it was the only thing his mouth could form.

A deep breath. Two. Hayley starts talking, her voice just above a whisper.

"I had a fight with Chad. He packed his bags and stormed out of the hotel room, and I decided to go clubbing because why not. I found Juliette there. She recognized me." She laughs, and it's the most self-deprecating thing Taylor has ever seen from her. "We talked about you. And then she just- I don't know what happened. Suddenly we were on the hotel room I had been with Chad just hours before. I- I liked it. I liked the way she just... left me her number. Told me to call her back. Which I did."

Hayley smiles, and then buries her face in her hands. Taylor isn't sure of what to do.

"I don't know why I keep doing this," she says, "but I can't seem to stop. I'm not even gay. I don't even think I'm bisexual, it's just... _her_. And the worst part is, I don't feel even remotely bad. I like it. It's like I'm addicted."

Addictions are a powerful thing. Taylor should know.

-//-

"Nothing you do can change my mind about you." Taylor says, at the end. "Not one thing you do."

Hayley smiles wide. Still doesn't look him in the eyes.

He understands.

-//-

Taylor brings Hayley a cup of coffee. She accepts it.

"Please don't tell anybody." She blurts out. Then, she looks down to the cup, and sips.

"I wasn't going to." Taylor says. He probably doesn't sound very reassuring.

You can't tell people something you're still not quite certain it's happening, and Taylor knows that first-hand. Hayley's secret is safe on that side.

-//-

"You were smoking." Hayley notices. Taylor gives her a half-hearted smile.

"I was."

"I didn't know you smoked."

"I do."

"Why?" He doesn't know how to answer.

When Taylor first met Hayley, he immediately felt attracted to her. The kind of attraction that consumes you fast, like fire, and turns you into ashes. Like a cigarette.

It became more than attraction when he got to know her. And he tried to push it away, but her mere existence had Taylor feeling a burning sensation on his heart, and his throat, and all of his body. So he replaced it with real cigarettes.

He also, decided not to act on it. Because cigarettes are addictive, and fire burns, and people do not rise from ashes. He's not a phoenix.

"Because sometimes, you just need to turn something into ash so you won't turn into ash yourself." He answers.

-//-

Their dynamic does change. It was an inevitability, more than anything else. Because Taylor knows Hayley's favorite pastime is spending the nights in the arms of a girl, and Hayley knows Taylor likes to fill his lungs with smoke so he won't fade away into the air.

Jeremy is too busy learning how to be a dad to a baby girl he loves but doesn't always understand. He doesn't notice how Hayley and Taylor seem to be both drifting apart and pulling each other closer at the same time.

It's probably for the better.

-//-

Taylor was aware of how damaging smoking was. Even more aware now that he kept finding pamphlets about the dangers of smoking hidden under his pillow or inside his suitcase, or on top of his laptop.

He wasn't about to knit a big, red "A" on every t-shirt of Hayley he found. Now, though, he felt a bit tempted.

But the last straw happened one night when Taylor decided to go for a smoke outside of the tour bus. Hayley followed him, and, after Taylor lit the cigarette, she grabbed it.

She threw it to the floor and stepped on it. Like a sad metaphor of his own life.

"Smoking is wrong." She says, blatant worry on her face. Taylor frowns.

"You know," he spits out, "you sleeping with Juliette is wrong, but I don't follow you and push her off of you while you're having sex in some cheap motel, like a dirty whore."

Hayley's worried face turns into pure anger.

Small victories.

-//-

He ends up almost finishing the pack of cigarettes by the time the driver announces they’re leaving.

When he walks back into the bus, the smell of smoke follows him.

Jeremy is talking over Skype with Kathryn. Hayley is talking to Chad on the phone, tucked away inside her bunk. Taylor feels sick.

-//-

Taylor knows he should feel bad about Chad. He knows he should tell him, or at least hint at it, to soften the blow when he inevitably finds out Hayley is cheating.

Truth is, he doesn’t want the blow to be softer. He wants it to hurt.

He wants Chad to feel like he felt whenever Hayley, proudly, announced how awesome it felt to have Chad Gilbert as her boyfriend. He wants Chad to feel like he’s going to become smoke and disappear into the air.

The next time they stop, Taylor only smokes one cigarette. He thinks about Chad while he’s doing it, and refuses, _refuses_ to feel bad about it.

-//-

Whenever Taylor played guitar, he felt like the sound of it and his heartbeat are the same. Like the strings were just an extension of his fingers, like the guitar was just an extension of his body. Like the sound he created was an extension of his soul.

He was able to put that into words because of a talk he had with Hayley. She had said her voice was just her own soul communicating with the world, and her body was just a mere intermediary.

Lately, he had been noticing how his guitar felt like a stranger. Like it didn’t belong to him anymore.

He wonders, briefly, if Hayley feels like her voice doesn’t belong to her anymore. He decides he doesn’t have to care.

-//-

The crew decides to host a “tourwarming” party. Taylor really doesn’t wanna go, but Jeremy is bored without his wife and his daughter and his dog, and Hayley says she’s indifferent but the way she’s picking up clothes and deciding on eye makeup with that strange glint in her eye tells a different story.

At the end, they all go. And soon enough, when Taylor sees a familiar blonde girl walking into the club, he understands that Hayley wasn’t just excited over the clothes and makeup.

Juliette walks straight to where Hayley is, whispers something in her ear, and they both walk outside a few minutes later.

The song that’s playing has a strong bass line, resonating in his entire body. It drowns his heartbeat for a moment. He loves it.

When he realizes his eyes haven’t drifted from the spot where Hayley had been about 20 minutes ago, he knows it’s time for a cigarette.

He walks out, and doesn’t let his eyes wander.

He’s losing control. For the first time in what feels like forever, he doesn’t mind one bit.

-//-

Taylor was never one to believe in romantic stories. Sure, he had watched all those Nicholas Sparks movies (with Hayley) and read those Twilight books (because Hayley asked him to), but he never believed in happy endings. Or happy beginnings, or happy whole-lot-of-middle’s, for that matter. Soulmates, meant-to-be, all those things sound cute in theory, but they’re ridiculous.

Something he’s also always found ridiculous is being hung up in someone. But then again, it sounds so much easier in theory: If you just got broken up with, accept that it’s over and move the fuck on. If you broke up with someone, it was you who ended it so you have no right to be hung up, so move the fuck on. If you’re in love with someone who doesn’t love you back, accept your feelings aren’t reciprocated and move the fuck on. See? It’s easy. Painless.

Feelings are only a problem if you let them become a problem.

He can still taste the cigarette he had earlier, and for some reason, it turns him on more. There, laying on his bunk, completely alone, he reaches for the waistband of his boxers and pulls them down. He’s visibly aroused, of course, so he doesn’t even try to make it last; he just wraps his hand around his length and starts to pump, up and down, fast and messy and desperate.

The only image on his mind is Hayley’s naked chest, those little pink nipples. Hayley laying on top of a table, Hayley kissing another girl. Hayley letting this girl touch her in places he can only dream of touching, Hayley letting this girl lick her and kiss her in places he can only imagine.

He doesn’t last very long and comes with a little, throaty whimper.

When he’s cleaning himself up, he realizes he let his feelings become a problem. He’s not sure if that’s a bad thing.

-//-

The next day at rehearsal, Jeremy walks straight to where Taylor is and punches him right in the face. Taylor falls.

“What the fuck was that for?!” He shouts, holding his face.

“Don’t ever call Hayley a whore again.” Jeremy spits out through his teeth, his eyebrows furrowed and fists clenched. Taylor looks up from the floor.

“Since when does she need you to defend her honor? Do you even know why I said that?”

“I don’t need to know.”

“So you don’t know, huh?” Taylor says, and gives Jeremy a little smirk that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I hate to be the one to break this to you, but that ‘honor’ you’re defending went down the drain when Hayley started sleeping with a married girl.”

Jeremy’s face immediately darkens. Taylor really shouldn’t feel that good about it.

Just for an extra dramatic effect, he gives Jeremy another little smirk and then leaves rehearsal before it’s even started.

Serves Jeremy right.

-//-

In retrospective, Taylor knows Jeremy’s intentions were good. He knows Jeremy cares about Hayley like she was his sister (and, bitterly, he knows he also cares about Taylor like he was his brother), and he knows Jeremy’s always been very protective of her, so he doesn’t hold it against Jeremy. He actually admires him a bit for it, and kinda feels bad for whoever breaks his daughter’s heart when she’s older.

What he does, though, is hold it against Hayley. Because she has no right to go around patronizing him, faux-worrying about him because of the smoking, and having Jeremy Davis (who, by the way, can really throw a punch) defending her nonexistent honor.

She tries to talk to him as if nothing’s happened. Taylor ignores her, and also ignores the look of pure hurt on her face.

-//-

“You know I’m not going to stop doing… this, whatever I’m doing, with Juliette, right?” Hayley says, one day, sitting next to where Taylor is smoking a cigarette. He blows the smoke out of his mouth, and it dances across the air like a ballerina, twirling and twirling until it disappears into the night.

“You don’t have to justify yourself, Hayley.” Taylor says, and throws away the cigarette. “I didn’t even want to get involved. This is your life.”

“I didn’t want you to get involved, either.” Hayley grins, and Taylor rolls his eyes at her but there’s a playful smile on his mouth.

“That’s not why I’m trying to stay away from you.” He says, and doesn’t even try to pull out another cigarette.

“I don’t want you to stay away from me.” She whispers. And he just shakes his head, stands up and walks away.

-//-

Hayley and Juliette never talk. Taylor notices they only talk to agree on a place to meet up.

He only notices they’re talking because the way Hayley’s face lights up is different than any other expression. Different than her expression when she talks to Chad.

Taylor hates noticing the small things. He knew he had been losing control for years now, and he had been okay with it, but cigarettes don’t help much anymore.

He sees Hayley falling in love with a girl, and he can almost feel his heart not beating anymore.

He hates it.

-//-

The first time Taylor hooks up with a random girl, he does it because he thought it would help him get over this thing happening with Hayley.

It is also so not what he was expecting. He’s sure he hasn’t been in the club for half an hour before this girl is pulling him towards a bathroom stall, pulling his pants out and taking his mostly flaccid dick in her mouth.

He can only see the top of the girl’s head, and he’s got his full attention on the way her tongue works around the tip of his cock, softly running along the length back and forth, back and forth, and he thinks he’s probably leaking now but doesn’t mind. He’s just thinking about how he doesn’t even remember seeing the girl’s face before she was pulling him towards the bathroom, and how amazing this girl is at giving blowjobs.

The good thing about random, faceless hookups is that he doesn’t have to be embarrassed when he comes without warning, forcing the girl to swallow, and then leaves without so much as a thank you.

He comes back for the beer he left forgotten on the table, and gets out of that place.

And, just for the record, he didn’t get over the thing happening with Hayley. But God, that was a good orgasm.

-//-

Hayley starts to look at him differently. There’s a sadness on her gaze that Taylor pretends not to notice.

Instead, he goes out to find someone to hook up with every night after they’re finished playing their show. He drinks, and smokes, and fucks faceless girls and leaves after he’s done with them. He comes back to the bus, retreats to his bunk, and doesn’t speak to Hayley or Jeremy unless he has to.

Jeremy is the only one who actually asks what’s happening. It all happens because Kat sends him a picture of the baby cuddling with Cowboy, and Jeremy’s face lights up and immediately shows it to Taylor. Who doesn’t react.

Taylor has never not reacted to a picture of the baby. He calls her his tiny human, and loves her almost like a daughter, and Jeremy is aware.

“Why aren’t you reacting.” Jeremy says. It’s not really a question, which is why Taylor doesn’t give him a real answer.

“That’s cute.” He only shrugs, and that only makes Jeremy angrier.

“Alright man, seriously, Hayley and I have been trying to leave you alone because we thought maybe that’s what you wanted, like yeah he’s smoking and he’s drinking his ass off every night and he’s probably trying to catch an STD or something, whatever, maybe he’s trying to live the rock ‘n’ roll life or something equally dumb, but this?”

“I didn’t know saying your daughter was cute meant something was wrong.” Taylor sighs, and leans against the wall. Jeremy punches the wall beside him.

“This is not about my daughter anymore, you asshole!” He shouts. “You’re killing yourself! You- You don’t even enjoy playing anymore, do you?”

Taylor lets out a breath. Jeremy nods, and Taylor can see the conflicting emotions in his face.

“I’m not gonna punch you anymore,” Jeremy whispers, “but we… I think we should have a band meeting.”

Jeremy walks away. Taylor stays glued to his spot, but he feels like a coward.

He knows he’s walking away too.

-//-

A part of him is tugging him, pulling him, whispering in his ear, trying to lure him into ignoring his problems and how they affect the band and just find a stranger in a club, fuck her and go back to normal. It’s the same part that told him to try that cigarette when he was 15. And the same part that told him to swim on that river, that time he got about three ribs broken.

Funny enough, not even that part of him wants him to fight for Hayley. Not even try.

But something, there’s something else, the rest of him, it’s stronger than that other part. It’s telling him to fight, not for Hayley, not for Jeremy, not for the band. It’s telling him to fight it. To save himself. To save the parts of him that remain untouched, unharmed.

His conscience is just screaming “you’re too far gone to be saved.”

He doesn’t want it to be true.

-//-

The band meeting goes by in a blur.

Taylor barely remembers it, but he knows Jeremy screams a lot. He cries, too.

He keeps accusing both Hayley and Taylor, he says he feels like he doesn’t know them anymore. Hayley tries to justify herself, because that’s something she has to do, and she explains the Juliette situation. Jeremy doesn’t want to hear it.

He says he’s disappointed in her. Hayley tries to pull the “it’s because it’s a girl, isn’t it?” card, and Jeremy snorts at her face. Hayley looks down, ashamed.

Taylor remembers being told, once again, that he’s killing himself. He only says “I’ve felt more alive lately than I have since we started this band.” And watches both Hayley’s and Jeremy’s faces fall.

They decide to break up. That’s the only thing Taylor remembers perfectly.

It feels like a knife keeps sawing back and forth. He finally knows how it feels.

He can’t breathe.

-//-

Hayley and Chad talk a few days after the band meeting.

Taylor finds out because Hayley comes back to the bus and her face is puffy and her eyes are red. And he just knows. He doesn’t even need to ask.

“What did he say?” Taylor does ask that, though, because he needs to know. Hayley sits beside him, and smiles a little.

“He didn’t say anything about it. He just stood there, and begged me not to leave him.”

Taylor wants to laugh at the absurdity. He didn’t think Chad was that weak.

He doesn’t laugh. He understands what Chad was feeling. He knows, and it’s the most pathetic realization, that he would have done the same.

-//-

Taylor tries to quit smoking.

He feels like he’s floating more often than not.

-//-

Hayley does break up with Chad, because she wasn’t willing to break things off with Juliette. She walks out of the hotel room where they were talking, and feels a weight off her shoulders.

Juliette decides to break things off with Hayley, claiming “it was fun because there weren’t any feelings involved. But then you went and fell for me.”

Hayley says “I didn’t even fall for her” in tears. Jeremy holds her through it, and doesn’t have the heart to tell her that her point fell a little short. Or a lot.

Taylor feels like he should have seen that coming. Instead, he passes her the Kleenex box, and holds her hand.

-//-

Jeremy’s daughter takes her first steps when they’re back at Tennessee for a show. She takes a few steps before stumbling and falling, but everybody cheers for her anyway.

Taylor goes a few weeks without smoking, gives up and has one cigarette. Hayley finds out.

She tells him she’s proud of him for lasting that long.

He does feel like he’s learning to walk again.

-//-

Taylor sees Juliette one day, before they play their last show in L.A. She waves at him and smiles bright, with that characteristic look on her eyes that feels like she’s looking right through him.

He doesn’t wave back. He doesn’t smile back. He turns around and walks away.

Before their show, Taylor gives Hayley a hug. She laughs, and asks “What was that for?”

Taylor shrugs.

-//-

Later that night, he finds a text message on his phone.

“Tell her I fell for her too.”

He doesn’t tell her.

-//-

The last show of the tour happens on New York.

It is also the last show of the band.

Taylor can’t remember why they decided to break up. In that moment, standing on stage, playing the songs he wrote and didn’t wrote and produced and didn’t produce, the songs he gave his input on, the songs he just went along with, the songs that say more about his own life than he could ever say himself… He can’t see how this is ending.

He gave away most of his youth to this, but he still feels far too young for it to end. He knows he won’t ever be remembered after tonight. He knows he will be dead after this is over.

At the end of the show, Hayley can’t stop crying. She gives a little speech at the end, thanking the fans, and they just stand there confused but cheer at them nonetheless.

They don’t know yet. They will understand soon.

When they’re backstage, the three of them hug. And cry.

-//-

Taylor sits on the stairs of the bus. He’s gonna miss that feeling. Sleeping on bunks, having a tight schedule, having cereal for breakfast every day.

Alright, maybe not the latter. He still can have cereal for breakfast.

A part of him is still in happy denial. _This is temporary. Maybe we can put out another CD after this. I might even take the tiny human to her first day of preschool, and sit first row on Hayley’s wedding and maybe even be genuinely happy for her._

_This isn’t really happening. I still have it all._

When Hayley sits next to him on the bus, she’s smoking a cigarette. Taylor has to laugh at the irony.

He slides an arm around her shoulders, and they sit there until the driver tells them they have to go.

-//-

Taylor feels Hayley sliding into his bunk a few hours later.

“I miss you already.” She says, and Taylor notices she’s crying. He opens his arms, trying to be as welcoming as he can, and she accepts the offer.

They just lay in the bunk and listen to each other breathe.

-//-

Taylor had written a list of things he wanted to get done before his death when he was thirteen. The name of the list was “Taylor York’s list of things to do before dying”, because he was never creative for titles.

Some of the things he thought about, he never wrote them down but he always kept them in mind.

Hayley kisses him about an hour after she crawled into his bunk. Taylor thinks he would cross that off the list if he had written it down.

-//-

Taylor doesn’t call it “making love”. Any love he had left for Hayley disappeared in between cigarette smoke, affairs and breakups.

What he can’t deny is that it feels more right than anything else in his life right now. She feels more right than any of those faceless, nameless girls he found on clubs. She kisses him in a way that makes him feel ashamed of ever needing anybody else, anything else. She touches him with the softest touch, like he might break, like her fingers might scar him, and Taylor wonders briefly if she was ever aware of how much she damaged him. How much he could damage her.

He wants to think this is wrong. This is gonna fuck him up more than he already was.

They lay together, naked, after they’re done, and he knows this could never be wrong.

-//-

He can still taste Hayley’s lips. He knows he won’t ever be able to get rid of it, and it almost feels worse than having the taste of cigarettes always on his mouth.

All of their stuff was already packed from the night before. Taylor just grabs his bags, his guitar, and leaves.

He doesn’t look back.

-//-

When Hayley wakes up, she finds a note on the pillow beside her.

_I’ve been missing you since the day I first met you._

_I still miss you. That’s the only thing that will remain._

-//-

Taylor doesn’t take his tiny human to her first day of preschool, or elementary school, or middle school, or high school.

He doesn’t go to Hayley’s wedding. He never feels genuinely happy for her, because he doesn’t even find out about her getting married.

He cut off every tie he had to her for good. But her taste on his lips doesn’t disappear.

The ache becomes more bearable with time, almost disappears. But he still misses her. It’s the only thing that remains.

**Author's Note:**

> Blame Panic! At The Disco. More specifically, blame Too Rare To Die. Fuck, that's a good album.  
> This has been in the works for almost four weeks, it ate me inside and it was horrible to write but it was also incredibly therapeutic. I haven't written anything else since I started it.
> 
> I guess I should also apologize for Louder Than Sirens, but I have no excuse other than college, utter lack of inspiration and this fic which was the rarest, most amazing writing experience of my life.   
> I hope I did it justice.


End file.
